Detroit schools kickback scheme explained in ex-principal's emails

In a series of conversations with her boss in November 2014, Kenyetta (KC) Wilbourn, the former principal of Mumford High School, laid bare the nature of alleged corruption in the Educational Achievement Authority, according to an account contained in hundreds of pages of documents and e-mails released by the EAA this week.

Wilbourn acknowledged that she would help vendors score school business by ghost writing their responses to bids. She would take a cut of vendor payments and allow vendors to overbill. In one case, she said she had a vendor hire her uncle to channel money to her cousin.

"She said she was taught all of this during her DPS days by veteran principals," EAA Chancellor Veronica Conforme wrote in a summary of the conversations she sent to district lawyer Michelle Crockett, who later forwarded them to the FBI. DPS is a reference to Detroit Public Schools, where Wilbourn worked for years before joining the EAA, the special school district created in 2012 to turn around Michigan's lowest-performing schools. Wilbourn mentioned specifically a former principal who now works as an administrator for DPS as her mentor in how to work vendors to her advantage.

Remember when you pay your property tax bill that some of that money is "for the kids."

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